Monday, September 26, 2022

Gnosticism against homosexuality

Dr Will Roscoe wrote this about the Gospel of Judas.

This blog you're reading now hasn't engaged the Judas Gospel - directly. (We do appreciate the Tchacos Codex here and we're glad we now own it.) We generally have associated the Judas Gospel with its namesake from Not The Nine O' Clock News (specifically the Beeb's Not 1982 calendar spinoff). Also the first Judas translations were ... unfit for purpose. (Since 2007 we might be better off.)

But, as the anti-Thomas people like to point out that fake gospel's anti-feminism; here Roscoe would point us to Judas' anti-homosexuality.

Roscoe believes that behind the polemic of Judas is an illumination of Judas' opponents - who are, as they must be, the other eleven disciples. If Judas condemns homosexuality and Judaism, this points to a pro-Jewish and pro-"Queer" (Roscoe's words) earliest, or at least earlier, Christianity. Judas meanwhile uses Pauline language as Paul did - as insults: arsenokoitēs.

Roscoe concludes, implies anyway, that James and Peter and The Twelve had set up a boys'-own society. The Carpocratians held best to the Apostles' vision - by way of Saint Mark, as Morton Smith has transmitted him. Paul resisted this and his "Homophobia" (Roscoe's word, again) has carried the day. But before Paul became orthodox, heterodox cults also adopted Paul - like the Valentinians. Judas represents a Sethian cult, also adopting Paul.

Of interest is that The Expanse proposes a future Christianity (based on Augustine) whose marriages shall be between a woman and a... woman. It's progressive Christianity today but four centuries from now, it may just be Christianity.

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